Desire

Teilhard de Chardin expressed our true nature perfectly when he said: “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” As a human being you have a story, you have thoughts, including the “I” and “me” thoughts, but your true nature is the pure, aware spaciousness—your spiritual essence—you connect with when you do the practice.

     

Because you are human, you’ll still have the normal human desires for food, shelter, sleep, sex, and creative expression, but the nature of desire changes as you become freer and more present. You realize that desire is an inherent part of your life force and you honor it as such, but you’re no longer attached to your desires.

     

If a particular desire cannot be fulfilled right now, you’re okay with that. You just allow it to fall away. After all, the energy of desire is always there, waiting to arise again, and maybe it will be satisfied the next time. Again, you, as this conscious, aware being you are, are always bigger than, senior to, anything you experience. 

     

It is the same with what I call “residues” of old ego patterns and behaviors. Even after realizing the truth within, you still have an ego; you still have a personality, so you can still be subject to the ego’s neuroses. If you tended to be an angry person before realization —or impatient, or afraid of confrontation, or insensitive to the needs of others—eighty or eighty-five percent of that neurosis will fall away after you wake up. 

     

But you will still have tendencies to get caught up in your old patterns even after you are now awake and free, and have found the source of happiness within.

     

The difference now is that you see it much more quickly, and in the seeing, it falls away. Yes, you may need to apologize for your behavior, or even make amends to someone affected by it, but you do that relatively easily, maybe with the words: “I’m sorry, I got caught up in an old ego residue there…”

     

Then you will just smile, and come back to where you always live: right here, now, alert and completely open to life in the present moment…